Yakuza Graveyard (Web Exclusive)
Reviewed by Adam Bingham

Produced by Norimichi Matsudaira; directed by Kinji Fukasaku; written by Kazuo Kasahara; cinematography by Toru Nakajima; edited by Isamu Ichida; starring Tetsuya Watari, Tatsuo Umemiya, Meiko Kaji, Nagisa Oshima, Kei Sato, Hideo Murota, and Harume Sone. Blu-ray region A and B, color, 97 min., Japanese dialogue with optional English subtitles, 1976. A Radiance Films release.

In the wake of the groundbreaking Battles Without Honor and Humanity series of revolutionary jitsuroku eiga (True Account) Yakuza films in the early 1970s, Kinji Fukasaku spent considerable time refining his vision of the genre as a vehicle for reconsidering postwar Japanese history from the bottom up. Not for Fukasaku or writer Kazuo Kasehara (who had already penned several of the director’s key Jitsuroku eiga) the honor among thieves and respectfully codified existence that had characterized key earlier Chivalrous (Ninkyo) Yakuza films such as the Abashiri Prison series or Big Time Gambling Boss (1968), also written by Kasehara. Instead, their characters are typically antiheroic. Their actions and attitudes bespeak a frequent disregard for such strictures; they display, indeed flaunt, personal proclivities that are brashly opposed to the worlds in which they operate and that prioritize personal over any other concerns.

Yakuza Graveyard concerns a once-disgraced cop, Kuroiwa (Tetsuya Watari), whose increasingly outlandish methods in his confrontations with two yakuza gangs lead to a three-way conflict with authorities, within and between whom there emerge various enmities, connections, and both personal and professional interactions. The tension between these gangs and the police is exacerbated by the protagonist’s burgeoning relationship with Keiko (Meiko Kaji), the wife of a senior yakuza serving a jail sentence, and subsequent closeness with an acting yakuza gang head, all of which sets in motion a series of events that, as the title implies, bespeaks death and demise. This is, importantly, a figurative as much as literal landscape of death: if not of the yakuza as an organization and criminal enterprise then at least of any semblance of the virtues and codes of its once-rigid masculine standards of behavior—though in truth this death reverberates through all characters. The fact that Kuroiwa is both a cop and, ultimately, becomes something like an honorary (or dishonorary) yakuza is key here. He charts a single-minded course through these different institutions, indifferent to their finer points of order except for the collateral damage left in the wake and on the periphery of the insular worlds in which they operate. It is this tension between and attendant reflection on these levels of a stratified society that then becomes the key reference point throughout.  

Yakuza Graveyard does not so much explore the commonality between cops and thugs (as the title of other Fukasaku films such as Cops vs. Thugs [1975] and Doberman Cop [1978] suggest was a significant aspect of his work, as well as a generic trait in general) so much as it does a man trying to steer a course through and between these opposing forces. The fact that Kuroiwa variously falls foul of both the police and the yakuza suggests this is a specific case study rather than a representative example of a cultural type or paradigm. It is true that both institutions mirror one another in their interactions, as well as the ways in which hierarchies of power and domination are made manifest. They are also, interestingly, spaces of work only and contain almost no homosociality. However, they are not facsimiles of one another. They each operate with a distinct set of imperatives and internal practices, which the script details quite precisely. The clash is between gangs rather than between cops and yakuza, whose collusion at times seems quite formally accepted and acceptable, especially in meetings that evince little if any sense of trouble over their ongoing collaboration.

Typically for Fukasaku, and by this time a key feature of his work, is the chaotic style, the relentlessly handheld camera that is thrown around as much as the characters and often seems incommensurate to capturing the frenetic action that frequently explodes abruptly on screen and ends just as suddenly. Indeed, it is at times difficult to clearly discern what is happening and to whom, even in moments of comparative repose and stillness. This is a world (and a genre) thrown very much off kilter, a world where any stable points of reference and identification have been all but obliterated. Koiwara as both cop and yakuza reflects this notion, though he is often the static eye of this stylistic storm. He is frequently an immobile presence, typically with head bowed and eyes raised as he is berated by superiors and those with whom he clashes. Watari’s very physical performance stresses through body rather than verbal language, whether this be his disdain for those around him or indeed when, almost despite himself, his sympathy is roused when faced with the battered, broken lives of those who have found themselves part of a criminal existence by inclement circumstance or malign fate. Enemies becomes allies and friends become enemies but little changes him, merely how others perceive and/or use him. 

Against this tabula rasa of a protagonist is a more classical structure replete with scenarios, motifs, and character relations that mirror one another and develop over the course of the film. To this end, a key addition here, something touched upon by Kasehara in interviews about Yakuza Graveyard, is the emphasis on zainichi, first- or second-generation Korean immigrants in Japan who had repeatedly suffered discrimination and often violent prejudice. Keiko is identified as a zainichi, as is her gang boss Bull (Tatsuo Umemiya), with whom Kuroiwa forms a highly transgressive bond after a mutual recognition of kinship based upon nothing so much as violent proclivities. In many ways the homosociality that informs this bond and that is the typical raw material of the chivalrous Yakuza film is shown in no uncertain terms to be a weakness, a point of vulnerability for the men as it is a means for them to be used or exploited. Masculinity, especially the specifically blue-collar masculinity of Watari’s performance and persona, is not tragic or especially melancholic in the mode of broadly comparable directors such as Nicholas Ray or Jean-Pierre Melville. Koiwara reflects little if at all on his typically solitary life, relationships, or professional habits. He is a creature of instinct, action, and reaction, less antiquated than those characters inhabiting the above filmmakers’ work than he is merely disposable, less able to affect what goes on around him despite his violence and aggression. He remains a blunt instrument and, despite his singular methods and proclivities, is ironically more susceptible, even vulnerable, to manipulation.  

In addition, the casting of Kei Sato and especially New Wave luminary director Nagisa Oshima—artists often involved in depicting the plight of zainichi in films such as Sing a Song of Sex (1967), Three Resurrected Drunkards (1968), and Death by Hanging (1968)—in key supporting roles is telling. To this end, contemporary social unrest, literalized in both newsreel footage and recreations of marches and riots in a detailed montage scene depicting the acceleration of gang conflict and police activity, forms the backbone of the narrative. If in Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1972) the development of Japan as an aggressive consumer capitalist nation was allegorized by Fukasaku and Kasehara, here the perceptions of yakuza by the police and vice versa—and their interrelations, which occur even to the extent that official meetings take place including both sides of the law—offset this prejudice. Koreans are almost below criminals in Japanese society, the recurring generic notion of contested space in this instance a metaphor for a country riven with tension over national spaces and rights (or lack thereof) therein. 

Extra features on this Radiance Blu-Ray are, like their other recent releases, not extensive but informative and interesting. Two key supplements cover Fukasaku’s films with Meiko Kaji (a video piece of Midnight Eye critic and Fukasaku scholar Tom Mes) and an interview with director Kazuya Shiraishi, who talks about Fukasaku’s work in general, his yakuza films, and the place of Yakuza Graveyard within his oeuvre. In many ways this film is the culmination of this director’s work in the genre, since following it he went on to make sci-fi, samurai, and jidai-geki period dramas among other works; and as such its influence can certainly be felt. It looks forward to the way that a new generation of directors, including Takeshi Kitano (whose Violent Cop [1989] Fukasaku was originally to direct) and Takashi Miike (who would go on to rework an earlier Fukasaku film, Graveyard of Honor [1976]) would further dismantle the classical tenets of the genre in the 1990s and 2000s. Yakuza Graveyard is in many ways more unassuming than its forebears in Fukasaku’s career, yet is no less interesting for this.

Adam Bingham lives and works in the U.K. where he teaches film studies and researches Japanese cinema.

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